Tell employees the truth.

Paul Galvin, founder of Motorola shared this thought in Jim Shaffer’s book, The Leadership Solution and he’s right. Employees are grown-ups. They can handle bad news, especially when they know they can trust their leaders. What they can’t handle is uncertainty, lack of clarity or a lack of trust from their leaders.

When leaders hesitate to share information with employees, they have good intentions but leaders risk damaging their own credibility and alienating their greatest asset by not sharing.

Employees know when you're hiding something. If you aren't straight with them, you risk encouraging the rumour mill. People will fill the void with what makes sense to them.

Comments

Time to Smile Video

It's not often I see a video that exemplifies my philosophy of clarifying, simplifying and engaging employees; but my colleague Allison Jones at the City of Hamilton has done just that. Based on an idea she got from a City of New Market communications video called Glow , she put together a video that sends a clear, simple and engaging message to employees at Community Services : what they do makes a difference, one starfish at a time . Since the production, the City Manager decided to use it when he presented the Strategic Plan to Council to illustrate the good work the City does. See it for yourself .

If You Clarify, There's No Need to Explain

Clarifying is not the same as explaining. Let me explain. No, wait: let me clarify that...which is it? When I hear the word 'explain', I envision multiple paragraphs of additional text that may not be necessary. Whereas the word 'clarify' evokes a beautiful landscape of writing where every word means something and no word can be left out. In the meantime, yes, 'clarify' and 'explain' are synonyms, which means they are similar, not exactly alike. In the context of writing well and writing to engage, I recommend clarity over too much explanation; perhaps that's a better way to put it. If anyone needs me to clarify that, let me know.

Ah, yes... The "C" Word

In the Communications field, the "C" word can mean numerous things. In Internal or Employee Communications, we often refer to big "C" and little "c" communications. Big "C" Communications tends to include official communications tactics and products that get everyone's attention in an organization: posters, banners, advertising, website splash pages, e-newsletters, town halls and major 'memos', to name a few. Little "c" communications tends to be the internal, day-to-day business communications in a workplace about doing the work itself such messages about new procedures, processes, policies and plans, also internal emails, operational and tactical messages. The "C" word that is missing from this discussion is Culture. These are the ideas and messages that Culture communicates: How people behave in their workplace. What the culture tolerates as appropriate or inappropriate behaviour. For example, what goes ...

iClarify | Simplify | Engage

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